


Still Life

by mwestbelle



Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Body Horror, Horror, M/M, Medical Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-01
Updated: 2011-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 22:37:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/217841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mwestbelle/pseuds/mwestbelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerard immortalizes Frank in his own way. (Graphic medical ickiness)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Life

The smell is what wakes him up: antibacterial, antiseptic. The smell of rubbing alcohol, cotton swabs, sterilized metal, latex gloves. For a moment, he feels like a child again, in the hospital for one racking cough or another, like he is every winter. But he's not a child, and it’s been years since he did more than tie another scarf around his neck when his lungs ached. Still, it smells so familiar, and he's half expecting to see his mom sitting in a chair against the wall, purse clutched in her lap because she's Jersey through and through and trusts the hospital staff with her son's life but not with her wallet, hair flat from sleeping against a waiting room wall. It takes him a few tries to open his eyes, lids crusted together from sleep, but the ceiling is white with cracks spiderwebbing through it and a fluorescent light that flickers slightly. There is indeed a chair against the wall, though of course his mom isn't actually in it, and a counter at the far end of the room--he can see the glint of some kind of instrument on it, but his eyes are still too blurry from sleep to make it out properly. Standard hospital.

Except kind of quiet. The blocky machine with wires going into the wall and into his arm beeps sporadically and whirs in the not-soft, but not really noticeable way that hospital machines do. Or maybe he’s just used to them, it’s the strange soundtrack from his sick childhood--beeping monitors and purring ventilators and the squeaky-quiet steps of nurses and the faint call of ambulances coming in to roost. But he doesn’t hear all that now, just the steady sound from the machine and his own breath.

He also hears the squeak creak of a door opening and there’s a doctor with a mess of dark hair that looks like it would probably be, against regulation or something (do doctors have hair codes?) and a clipboard clutched to his chest. When he sees Frank, he beams.

“Hey, you’re up.” Frank tries to answer but his voice is sick and sore and there’s something thick and sticky in his throat. “No, hey, don’t strain yourself.”

Frank coughs, a deep satisfying one that makes his chest ache in all the familiar ways but doesn’t actually bring any of the heavy sticky out of his chest and throat and into his mouth, just upsets it a little. He wheezes through the phlegm (it’s the chunky kind, he can tell) and only manages to croak out “what” before he has to cough again.

“I was a little worried about you,” the doctor says with a half-smile that‘s awkward and would probably be endearing if Frank wasn‘t too busy hacking up some delicious throat snot--the globules are thick and lumpy at the back of his tongue while he heaves--to think about it. “But you’re going to be fine. Just need a little recovery time.”

Frank wants to ask what the fuck happened, who brought him here, what a cute guy like him is doing in a hospital like this (now that he isn’t rearranging his internal organs, he can tell that the doctor is really cute--upturned nose and a wide open face) but his mouth is full of globby snot and he’s trying to figure out whether Bob is going to take care of the rent for them (it’s technically Frank’s responsibility, and it would be so like Bob to not do it just out of stubbornness. The landlord is too scared of Bob to kick them out, he’d just tack a hefty late fine on for Frank to pay). The doctor bustles around pressing buttons and scribbling on his clipboard.

He flicks at the IV thoughtfully and smiles down at Frank. “I have to run some tests and all that kind of stuff, but I’ll check on you later, okay?” He starts back, fiddles with the IV drip, then pauses, teeth sinking a little into his lower lip. He walks back to the bed, reaches down and thumbs a stray piece of hair away from Frank’s eyes.

Frank swallows hard, forcing the phlegm back down his throat to settle sick and heavy in his stomach before the steady drip of fluid has his eyes going unfocused and his breathing evening out into sleep.

***

The next time Frank wakes up he can’t feel his foot. It isn’t like pins-and-needles from sitting still for too long that need to be shaken out, or even the bloodless numbness he sometimes gets when he sleeps wrong and has to flail around for a few minutes until feeling comes back to his limbs. He can feel his thigh--muscles tense and stiff from disuse--and the inside of his knee itches. He feels his calf and a prickly itch in his ankle but then it just…stops. It’s like there’s nothing there at all, even though he can _see_ it below the sheet. When he nudges sideways with his other foot, he can feel flesh, solid and definite but not right. It’s cool and doesn’t seem to be warming no matter how he prods at it with his toes--and he can’t feel it. It’s no different than poking at a hunk of beef, not that he would know, ugh, and he makes a face at the mental image.

He stares up at the cracks in the ceiling and resolves to punch Bob in the balls when he gets out--not balloons, no flowers, no visits, not even a fucking card--he’s got nothing to look at but the ceiling and the ceiling is pretty damn boring. He drags his foot up along his skin and this the source of the strange sharp itch on his ankle: stitches. He lets his eyes slide shut, heavy and reseeded. Stitched. He doesn’t know what he’s got stitches for but at least it solves the mystery of his foot. Local anesthetic. Now that he isn’t freaking out, it’s kind of cool, and he curls his toes speculatively over the arch of his numb foot.

The door opens, but he doesn’t bother opening his eyes. If the doctor needs him, he’ll wake him up, and Frank doesn’t really feel like making the usual bedside chitchat. There’s a cool gust when the sheets are pulled away from his foot, and he feels a fingertip tracing the ring of stitches, and then nothing. The doctor makes a soft sound, and there’s the scratch of ballpoint on paper.

He doesn’t try to “wake” Frank, doesn’t say anything, but when he touches Frank’s ankle again, his hand lingers. There’s no prodding or squeezing. It doesn’t feel analytical.

**

And then it’s his arm. Instead of the mid-chest set up he had before, his blankets are tucked neatly around his chin, so he’s encased in slightly fuzzy hospital blue. The doctor is in the room when he opens his eyes, for the first time, scribbling at something on a clipboard. It’s probably not real doctor stuff--Frank caught a glimpse of the paper when he left the time before, and as far as he could see it was just covered in ink doodles.

“Don’t do that, Frank.” The doctor takes a step closer, doubtless intending to dial up the IV drip, knock him out, but Frank already has a firm grip on the blanket. He yanks it down and just stares.

His arm is. His arm is not his arm. The skin is graying with coolant blue veins clear against it. It’s free of tattoos and it’s thin: underdeveloped with little muscle tone and bird-thin wrists. He notices all this, eyes moving slow and a little glassy, observing this arm like it’s a display, not attached to him.

But it _is_ attached, with a line of compulsively even black stitches, neat and clean, wedding the tan of his shoulder to this gray…thing.

“You’re not _better_ yet,” the doctor says, pouting. Frank reaches over, already hating himself for the irrepressible urge, and traces his fingers over the stitches (they don’t feel so different from his mom’s cross itching) and down over the flesh of the arm. It’s cool, and strangely firm, not pliant like it should be. He wonders vaguely why he isn’t panicking or throwing up.

“What the fuck is this?”

“It’s an arm,” the doctor says, giving Frank an odd look.

“It’s. It’s not _my_ arm.”

“It is now,” the doctor says, with a little cheerful bounce onto the balls of his feet. “This one is much nicer than your last one. I had to go with something younger to match your size, it will last you a good long time.”

Frank stares, not knowing what to say, brain panicked and foggy at the same time, because he isn’t a used car, he’s a person with someone else’s goddamn arm sewed onto him. But the doctor is fiddling with the IV, and Frank can’t think anymore.

**

Frank has stitches around his ankle, and his knee, circling the top of one thigh and inching up the side of the other, at both of his wrists, one elbow and one shoulder, tracing his collarbones and lines crisscrossing on his chest and belly. As far as he can feel, he’s nothing but a face now. He’d like to retroactively punch all the people who called him “just a pretty face” because now he knows what it is to see your body under a sheet and have that be the only proof it exists at all. He can feel nothing below his neck, nothing. Of course, there’s no knowing how much of his body is actually his. Dead flesh grafted onto his outsides and shoved into his insides until he doesn’t know if there’s more preservatives in his veins than blood and even the parts that he was born with are lost to him--lost through layers of decay and drugs and shock.

But it’s still all attached to him, is in it’s own sick way his--at least, it’s the only one he has--and the way the doctor eyes him is more than uncomfortable. He’s smiling while he prods at the bottoms of Frank’s feet and pinches at the spots behind his elbows. Finally satisfied--Frank isn’t sure with what, there’s no change as far as he can feel (not very far at all)--the doctor licks his lips.

“You look tense.” He rests his hand high on Frank’s thigh. If Frank could feel his stomach, he knows it would be twisted and cold. As it is, he can feel sharp dread just behind his eyes, as the doctor starts to rub gently.

The dread explodes into full disgust and terror when he sees the doctor’s hand slip over to palm his crotch.

“What--” Frank swallows hard to fight back the bile he didn’t know was rising until it was already bitter in his mouth. “What are you--”

“Shh.” The doctor pushes the sheets out of the way, carefully strips him of his hospital gown, leaving Frank with his map of black stitches bare to the cool air--he can’t feel it, but he doesn’t feel thankful for that small blessing in this moment. He doesn’t want to look down his own body, see the raised lines that mean he’s been torn apart and shoddily patched back together with mismatched parts. But he has to, and he can look past the stitches ruining his tattoos because the doctor is running pale fingers along the length of his cock and. Frank can’t feel it.

He stays soft--of course he does, he’s pumped full of more drugs than he could name, scared out of his mind, and fucking _paralyzed_ from the neck down--and the doctor makes a soft disappointed noise. _Give up._ Frank begs silently. _It’s not worth it. Give up._ But instead, the doctor is moving, shifting--

And he’s lowering his head, taking Frank into his mouth. It’s. It’s like porn, only so surreal, because he can see dark hair brushing his thighs and hear the soft hums and slurping noises that the doctor makes but he can’t feel it, not any of it and when the doctor looks up at him through spiky black eyelashes he wants to cry.

He does, and the doctor pulls off immediately, wiping spit from the corners of his mouth. “Hey, it’s okay.” He squeezes Frank’s thigh with wide gentle eyes. “It’s the drugs, I know, don’t be embarrassed. It happens to me sometimes too.”

And it’s just so ridiculous that Frank laughs through the tears hot on his cheeks. “Fuck. What the fuck is all this?”

“You’re sick,” the doctor says, slow and soothing. “I’m making you better.”

“Better? I. I can’t fucking move, how is that better?”

“There are a few adverse side effects.” Like Frank’s suffering from dizzy spells or constipation, not being patchworked together with bits of corpses. “It’s not perfect yet. I’ll figure it out.”

“You’ll figure it out.” His echo is hollow, and he looks away, trying not to meet the doctor’s eyes. “Why. Why me?” Out of the entire world, it had to be him.

The doctor looks shocked. “Frankie. You know you’re the only one I’d do this for. I have to help you however I can. I love you.” He smiles a little, crookedly, shyly, and strokes his thumb over Frank’s hipbone. “We love each other.”

“We. I don’t even know who you are.”

“Don’t be like that, Frankie.” The doctor’s eyes are still wide and his smile caring, but there’s a rough thread in his voice. “Not now. Not after everything I’ve done for you.”

“You fucking chopped me up, how the hell am I supposed to be like?”

“You’re _sick_ ,” the doctor insists. “I don’t understand why you’re being so hateful, after all we’ve gone through together. I know you love me, I don’t want any part of this game.”

“You’re _insane_.” Frank feels like an animal, trapped, teeth bared. “You’re a fucking sicko and I’m _not_ in love with you.”

He sees the loving expression on the doctor’s face flicker, revealing something sharp and ugly underneath, before his eyes go soft again. He reaches out to cup Frank’s cheek--Frank tries to jerk away from the warmth of his hand, but the doctor grabs his chin, holding him fast.

“Poor thing.” The doctor makes a sad clucking sound with his tongue, rubbing his thumb over the corner of Frank’s mouth. Frank is preparing to bite him when he speaks again. “I think it’s spread to that sweet little brain of yours.”

He clambers off the bed and over to the counter. Frank, paralyzed by dead flesh, can only stare as light glints off of metal.

“No.” The first is quiet, almost under his breath., disbelieving. But the doctor is moving closer, scalpel in hand, that happy dreamy look still on his face. The next is shrill, as loud as his abused throat can manage. “No, fuck no.”

Gerard climbs onto the bed, kneeling next to him and still _smiling_ , blade so close to Frank’s neck.

“I’m sorry,” Frank tries, eye aching as he strains to look all the way down to his own throat. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t. Fuck, I didn’t mean it.”

“I know you didn’t.” The doctor looks downright beatific. But then he’s moving, bracing himself with hands on Frank’s shoulders ( _not_ Frank’s shoulders, some other unfortunate soul’s, he can’t _feel_ them) and moves so that he’s straddling Frank’s chest with a thigh near each armpit Frank imagines how hot, suffocating they must feel and realizes that the doctor could be hard against his fucking collarbone and he wouldn’t know it. He has the terrible urge to look down, though he knows anything would be concealed in the loose rumple of the doctor’s lab coat. Besides, what would knowing bring him? A few moments of dread before the doctor humps his chest or holds him down and forces his mouth open, scalpel a constant promise.

But though the doctor moves closer, his true intentions are obviously worse than everything Frank was picturing. He leans forward and traces the flat of the scalpel in a smooth curve across Frank’s forehead.

“Don’t.” Frank’s voice is weak, and he can’t even try to jerk his head away, the last of his resistances, for fear of slicing his own head open. “Please.”

“Shh.” The doctor bends at the waist so he can press a kiss to the height of Frank’s cheekbone just as delicately as he presses the scalpel against Frank’s temple. “You don’t have to be scared. You know I’ll love you anyway.”


End file.
